Hi Mary:
Welcome to this exclusive club.  You will find that the people here are friendly and helpful.  I understand how upsetting this is as I am fairly new to this also.  I was told my diagnosis on March 13 of this year. Not so long ago.  I had never heard of Acoustic Neuroma or Gamma Knife surgery, which is what I ended up doing on April 18.  My ENT that I was finally refered to did not discover my AN as he did not order an MRI (with contrast and SHAME ON HIM, by the way).  Last summer I did not have facial numbness. It wasn't until I went to my family doctor the first of Jan and told him that I was experiencing some numbness on the left side of my face, near my ear, that I was sent to a neurologist who ordered the MRI. Took me over 6 weeks to get that office visit tho! That was a long wait.) Finally!  An answer to the ear problems I'd been having since the late fall of 2004.  The nurologist passed me off to the neurosurgeon who sent me to Dr. Modha, who recommended radiosurgery for me.  He just looked at me and said "Microsurgery is a very big deal."  I asked him, "If I were your mother, is this what you would recommend?"  He said, Yes.  So, I put my trust in him and went with the Gamma Knife procedure.  It went very well, and I go this month for a 3 month MRI.  The information was overwhelming for me, and I'm still learning about this stupid thing in my head, but it really boils down to only three choices - Watch and Wait, Microsurgery, or Radiosurgery.  You have a medium sized tumor so watching and waiting doesn't seem much of an option.  Microsurgery is performed on many patients and their outcome can be just fine. Experience of your team is important. Does your gut scream at you "Just get the darn thing out of there!"  Is that important to you or can you live with it inside your head, but dead, dead, dead after radiosurgery. Surgery takes 6 weeks to recover from, sometimes months depending on what happens to your balance.  Radiosurgery took me about three weeks to get back to normal (whatever that is for me!
). But then, I'm 60 if that made any difference. I took a steroid drug to help with swelling and that wasn't much fun, but the effects of that lasted about 8 or 9 days. Insomnia is a common side effect.  I chose the "zap it" approach and others on this board have done that also - but perhaps by a different procedure - Cyber Knife, fractionated stereotactic radiosurgery (FSR), Proton Beam, and maybe some of them will tell about their experiences.  Quite a few on here have had highly successful surgeries and are very loyal to the facility that they went to and will be happy to tell you their stories.  HEI in Los Angeles comes highly rated.  Emotionally, it's nice to come here and see that you aren't alone in the world.  This is supposed to be sort of rare, but I'm thinking - I don't think it's THAT rare!!  In March when I first signed on, I was like number 993 or something like that, and now there are 1,174 members!  So about 180 people came on this board since the first part of March!!  That's just the ones who have a computer and come looking.  There must be many more out there who never bothered to find this place.  Anyway, you are not alone and the "why me" thing will fade, in time. I told my doctor, "I can't believe I got something like this, I'm such an ordinary person."  He looked at me and said, "Well, it's an ordinary tumor."  I thought, well, okay...everybody is going to get something in their life and this is our something.  At least it's kind of interesting. I also have diabetes - that's so boring!!  And even tho this is the most
freakin' annoying thing I've ever had, it's a whole lot better than something else we could be talking about.  So, it's the worst thing that maybe has happened to us, but it's not the worse than can happen. We have to take the time to go through the stages - all the classic stages of grief, and then we are supposed to end up with acceptance. All of us do that in different ways and some of us take longer than others to get there, but that is the goal.  In the meantime, find the doctor that you are comfortable with and talk about your options and what makes the most sense to you and what gives you the outcome that you desire. Then just go for it. Sorry I was long winded today....guess I was in a chatty mood!!  Hang in there, Mary!!  It'll all be fine.
Sue
